NEWS FEATURE: Baptist Pastor Counsels Would-Be Spouses in New Book

c. 2003 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Peggy McMickle came home on the subway from working all day in downtown Manhattan to prepare dinner. Her husband, Marvin, a graduate student, was relaxing on the couch watching Walter Cronkite and the nightly news. At the end of the show, he walked into their small kitchen and told […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Peggy McMickle came home on the subway from working all day in downtown Manhattan to prepare dinner. Her husband, Marvin, a graduate student, was relaxing on the couch watching Walter Cronkite and the nightly news.

At the end of the show, he walked into their small kitchen and told his wife, “All is right with the world.”


She turned to him and said, “Maybe in the world, but not in this apartment.”

Sitting together recently on the couch in their Shaker Heights, Ohio, home, the McMickles smiled as they recalled the story from the early days of their marriage. But when it happened, both remembered, it was a painful moment of truth.

They had a long talk, and their domestic responsibilities were reordered.

“It wasn’t fun that day, but I’m sure it has helped contribute to these 28 years of marriage,” said McMickle, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland.

In a new book, “Before We Say I Do: 7 Steps to a Healthy Marriage,” published by Judson Press of Valley Forge, Pa., McMickle tries to help couples practice the honest communication he believes is essential to wedded bliss.

It is a modern marriage manual in that it addresses issues such as AIDS, interfaith relationships and feminism.

But the focus is on marriage as an act of faith, where both parties envision their union based on the biblical principles of the two people becoming “one flesh” for life.

“I’m not in the divorce business,” says McMickle, who encourages couples to forgive one another, even amid the pain of adultery.


The Baptist pastor said he would like to say that most churches, in the face of a nearly 50 percent divorce rate, are offering premarital counseling. But “I don’t think the majority are doing it,” he said.

At his church, couples seeking a minister-for-hire just to perform their wedding ceremony are turned away. Premarital counseling is required.

In those pastoral conversations and in his book, he encourages people contemplating marriage to talk about all sorts of uncomfortable subjects, from sexual and financial histories to the religious beliefs they hope to pass on to their children.

“You can’t lie to each other,” McMickle says. “Worse than lying, you can’t hold back truthful information.”

In one of the more poignant parts of the book, McMickle talks of knowing several women who have lived with and later died from AIDS-related illnesses. In each case, McMickle said, monogamous women contracted the disease from spouses who were engaged in bisexual activity.

While it may be uncomfortable to talk about, and it was even difficult for him to raise the subject at first with couples he counseled, McMickle says it is important for people considering marriage to be honest with one another about their sexual history and drug use and particularly to disclose any same-sex activity.


From a similar perspective, he urges couples to discuss everything from their housekeeping practices to their views on issues such as gun control and pornography to whether they want to keep separate bank accounts.

The best time to talk about these issues is before the marriage, McMickle advises.

In one controversial part of the book, McMickle cautions against interfaith marriages: “The chances of enjoying a healthy, lifelong marriage are greatly increased when you marry someone with whom you share a common religious tradition and a common routine of religious life and practice.”

In a special message for men, the pastor urges them to be aware of the issues raised by feminists and to reject the image of male domination in marriage.

Encouraging spouses to share household duties, McMickle says the biblical model for a marriage “is based upon partnership and not domination.”

“For a marriage to work, everybody has to do their share,” Peggy McMickle says.

But when things do go wrong, McMickle counsels forgiveness.

He says the Bible raises the bar of forgiveness awfully high “and forces us to reconsider the question of whether even something as hurtful and humiliating as adultery can and should be forgiven.”

There are times, McMickle says, when “divorce seems to be, sadly, the proper next step.”


But McMickle, who at age 10 endured the pain of his parents’ divorce, says he wrote the book to encourage couples to get married, and stay married, for the right reasons.

“My principal hope is that rates of divorce will fall like a rock,” he said. “I lived divorce, and I don’t wish it on others.”

DEA END BRIGGS

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